FPL 2023/24: Assessing the best players from Liverpool

There ought to be a rule like that, but unfortunately some of them are running accounts people pay for to get early information. How do you stop them playing dirty?

The template will still exist without them so it makes no difference.
How videos where they talk about their own team gain traction, I'll never know. Boring beyond belief.

FPL *is* a herd game though. We are chasing comparative rank, not absolute points. Of course, if we hit maximum points we would hit optimum rank, but the risks involved in doing that make the chances of success very slim. It is better to stay with the peloton and make a small number of (hopefully) (nearly) optimised moves to stay ahead.

In many ways, it's a boring, predictable game which punishes individuality and promotes group think. Somehow we keep coming back for more, but it has to be looked at through that lens.

Even if there were no 'content creators' and no discussion at all ahead of the GW1 deadline, which is impossible I know, we would probably go into the season with remarkably similar teams. It's a shame, but there we go. Draft [fantasy sport in general] is a far superior game, but there aren't enough viable PL players to really make it viable.

To be honest, I did a few weeks where I didn't follow any content creators and just did my own research, looked at players that seemed good. Used the members tables from here to look at xGI etc.

My team was still very template. I'd say like 10 players become very obvious picks after just a few weeks into the season and then it's the slight tweaks that make the difference.

It was blindingly obvious last year after say the first 5 weeks to captain Haaland, get Rashford, Arsenal were underpriced etc. It isn't the content creators who funnel everyone into the same players. It's common sense.

As someone who backs himself to beat the herd, I'm happy if millions have the same team.

I think the trick's to out-manoeuvre both.

Don't see much point to these fantasies about a giant OFF switch for content creators. It is what it is; people would talk FPL & share ideas anyway. Don't really agree that humans are herd animals exactly

In the past the vast majority of people didn't do research and picked their team based on emotions rather than data.

Content creators pick teams based on data. So now all their followers who copy have swapped emotions for data. That in itself is huge.

People who do their own research then end up with the template are in the minority and are basically replicating the process of a content creator. So that's not a valid argument.

There has always been a template, this is fact. However a template chosen through emotion can and was beaten regularly by experienced data driven players. This has been proven many times by content creators who have some of their best ranks back when the game was largely played on emotion over data.

A content creator can spend 24 hours picking their team based on research and data. Another person can simply spend 10 minutes copying that team instead of spending a full day doing the research needed to determine that team. Its like getting a degree in a week while someone else has to spend 3 years to get the same thing.

interesting discussion. For me the game has changed massively in recent seasons and the template is far more prevalent than ever before. And part of this is down to the proliferation of content. We have never seen the crazy high ownership numbers we saw last season before.

Unfortunately i think FPL has been negatively affected by all of this. And as it is I am finding myself enjoying the game less and less and that has led to me focusing my attention elsewhere on other formats which are more rewarding.

FPL itself publishes many teams recommended by its experts, and so does FFS with its pro-pundits.
They may appear to be fairly similar and be selected from a restricted group of popular players, but they aren't identical.
So the template doesn't really consist of one perfect team, rather it consists of a group of similar teams formed from a restricted selection of popular players.
And it also keeps changing from week to week.

A slightly different problem is perhaps with twitter, where twitter users arrive at a consensus that many then copy. However, those who follow this consensus may do well and score similar points totals, but they don't win FPL. To do that, it is necessary to vary from the consensus.

But much worse was last season when one particular content creator appeared to have many followers who followed his every move, or at least most of them. A significant number of these teams made exactly the same moves on exactly the same days for many weeks, with a number of small variations, with the result that at various positions in the top 10k (including some in the top thousand) there were many identical teams with the same transfer records and the same total points. It was suspected that many of these were actually multiple teams created by the content creator himself, and when this was pointed out to FPL they deleted many of them. If they had not done that, he would have been able to maintain these various identical teams until later in the season and then made different changes to them, which would have given him an unfair advantage.

Don’t listen to content creators play your own game. Where’s the fun if you copy someone’s team? They don’t care about you, they earn money from it and that’s legit if you ask me but it’s dull. Like many above said, even if you don’t follow any of them you’ll finish 80+% template, not a rocket science. Let’s be honest, FPL is not about skill (loving and watching football is all skill you need) as we want to think when we’re doing well, it’s about luck. Anyone can disagree but that’s not the point. I went Salahless last season (had him only on FH) and without KDB. Finished 2673. Skill? No. Remember when Liverpool and Chelsea scored 9 goals against their rivals? Salah and Havertz were backed massively for captaincy, we all know the outcome.
Play your own game but don’t go full maverick:D

The more I think about it, the more it would be better for the game to remove season histories and just display the best rank ever achieved by that manager and the year they achieved it. e.g for me. 11,479, 2016-2017.

Many, many managers (myself included) play safe because we are protecting, in my case, a sub-100k streak or hit rate. Playing it so safe means we are unlikely to do badly but also unlikely to do very well either.

If the only metric that matters is the best ever finish, going against the template and shooting for the fences would be not only viable but actually advisable. The middle of the road, safe advice offered by 95% of content creators would be devalued, or only useful for minileagues.

A much needed discussion. My frustration with the game is the inability to move up the ranks. It feels like only 2-3 players actually make a difference out of the starting 11. Generous pricing doesn't help either.

One idea I had but I'm not sure how it will work is by using a draft-esque hybrid model to the game. After GW1 any player with over 25% ownership is locked and unable to be transferred in until his ownership falls below 25% in 'active teams'. Again, I don't know how that will work but it will definitely break the template and force FPL managers to get creative.

Another possible solution might be additional FPL points awared for differentials players. This rewards going against the template.

I think the pricing is more responsible for the template, the content creators are just pointing out obvious mispricings and that the soft pricing has taken away the need to make choices.

I tell you what they are responsble for: the language quirk that has them saying '....a Foden, a Mahrez'. Are there lots of Fodens and you are picking one? Could you put his brothers in your team? Could you put his parents in your team? Could you put other people called Foden in your team? NO! Stop talking like there are multiple versions and you are having one of them!

I think it is done to partially hedge what you are saying, like you're not quite sure, either him or someone similar. I don't know who started it but it was Pras and Andy that I first noticed this with and now they are all doing it.

STOP IT!

Big data permeates everything FPL these days, including decisions.

With everyone using big data, the same decisions will be made by and large.

Until a more comparable alternative comes to the fore (which I doubt), people will continue to use the same big data as everyone else.

Yes absolutely and obviously 100%
There is no doubt in that.

The big problem is the vast number of players are not Fantasy worthy. They need to find away to change the scoring so that more players are pickable. Even something like double points for all promoted teams for the first Six gameweeks. Anything, because it is all pretty stale at the moment

"Remove the leader and we will see a different template."

Disagree. The template is a function of pricing. The issue is that the majority on here are viewing FPL from a different perspective to the game creators.

The game creators deliberately price the good players / fan favourites cheap so all the 'casuals' can have them in the team. The game creators want you to be able to get Rashford, Saka, Haaland, Mitoma, TAA etc. in the team.

If you are an Arsenal fan, they want you to be able to buy Odegaard, Martinelli and Saka and still have money to buy TAA etc. If you are a Liverpool fan, they want you to be able to buy TAA, Salah and Gakpo and still have money to buy Rashford and Saka. If you are a Man Utd fan, they want you to be able to buy Shaw, Rashford and Fernandes and still have money to buy TAA and Saka.

Once you look at FPL from this perspective, you will see why you can't destroy the template and also why the game rules and pricing is as it is. FPL is a marketing tool. It is a free game with pretty poor prizes. It it there to hook people into the PL (the actual football), not to be a competitive game for hardcores to only be able to compete in.